No One
by Jirel
Summary: W.A. No one ever paid attention to him as grew up. A oneshot about Kubota growing up. PLEASE comment and suggest improvements. Slice of life. I've had too few reviews and I'm fairly new to writing. Thank you.


As always, these characters belong to Kazuya Minekura. I couldn't think them up. :)

No one or Unwanted.

The world wasn't silent. There were bird calls, dogs barking and the beeps of car horns. And people talked. Just not to him. He saw people walking around wearing clothes, so he found a t shirt and put it on. It dragged on the ground and somehow there was a hole in the middle where it should cover his chest but no one noticed. No one ever noticed what he did. When he was younger and made the corner of the room wet and smelly someone would eventually clean it up; but no one ever said anything to him. He had noticed no one else left wet spots in the corners and eventually found out where he was supposed to do that. People also wiped themselves down with wet cloths, so sometimes he did that as well.

He often looked around the corners to see what the others were doing. He learned that being quiet and quick let him see more. He watched people put on t shirts until he could imitate them. The hole in the middle of his shirt moved over to his neck. He wondered if he walked out the gate, would they let him back in? He walked out the gate, but had to wait until someone else came back before he could get squeeze back through it. He noticed that the people who gave orders wore button-down shirts while the ones that carried out the commands wore t shirts. He tried for a shirt with buttons but there were none small enough for him.

Food was sometimes left in his room. Eventually he figured out that if he went into the kitchen while things were being cooked he could get hot food that tasted better. Since no one ever talked to him or acknowledged he was alive, they couldn't stop him from taking bites of the food waiting to be served. Some food he learned to avoid. Unwanted, unseen unacknowledged nobody or not; cutting a piece of a perfect cake waiting to be served to company still earned him a beating from the cook. But, if he was careful he could eat all he wanted.

Many years later he learned that most children went through a period of time of asking questions. He had never done that. No one would have ever answered him. No one ever noticed. He fell down the stairs once and it hurt so bad he screamed. No one cared, no one came. He limped for several days. He grew to feel as though a bubble surrounded him, between him and the world. Keeping him untouched.

An official arrived at the gate one day and announced that Kubota Makoto was registered to the house and was of an age to go to school. That was when he learned his name. Clothes suddenly appeared in his closet. The gate guards wouldn't let him leave unless he was properly dressed. It took a while for him to figure out how to wear the school uniform, but he was happy, he had a proper shirt. The kids at school teased him for being fat. They teased him for not talking. He tried to beat them up but he was too weak. So he became strong. And was no longer fat. Watching the children at school taught him how to act around others. How to pretend to be normal. But he wasn't. Other kids talked about their parents, some of them even had older brothers or sisters. It sounded like he had to have parents or he wouldn't be alive, but he had no idea who they were. There was a woman he had spotted sometimes looking at him, but she never talked to him, never touched him, certainly never hugged or kissed as the other kids said their mothers did.

The teacher talked to him about bathing on a regular basis, saying it was important to be clean. The entire class washed their hands together before lunch. One day while he was at home he wandered into an empty bathroom and found out he was big enough to turn on the water in the shower. He'd spied on people taking showers so he took off his clothes and tried it. He found he liked being clean and that soap smelled good. When he washed his hair every week it didn't itch anymore. Then he found the attic at home. He wanted to know more about the people who might be his "family" so he found ways to make holes through the ceiling and spy on them. He learned a lot about how the man who might be his father operated.

Home began to be boring, there was nothing new to find out there. School was boring. If the teacher told him something once, he always remembered it. Reading was harder but he worked on it until it was the same. He got straight A's on his report card but no one noticed or cared. He didn't play with the other children at school, he couldn't understand them. He wandered the alleyways and streets between school and home until dark. He learned to ghost through the shadows and watch the people trying to hide. They did the most interesting things, money changed hands, some people took drugs, others indulged in sex. Sex looked stupid. He watched people get beat up and people get killed. He didn't want to be someone that had to follow orders all the time. As he moved up a grade, money appeared in his room with a note saying that he could use it for lunch at school.

He wanted to know how to fight so he picked fights with the others his size who ran in the streets of Tokyo. He learned to ignore the blows, to watch what they were doing until he could imitate their moves. Then he learned to watch and anticipate them. Watching them move, evading their blows, it made him feel different, interested, intent, **alive**. Finally he started in on those bigger than him, he could beat all the kids his size. He stole a gun and spent his lunch money on ammunition so he could learn how to use it. Now he needed to learn how to make others do what he said. That was harder. He wasn't good with people. He couldn't understand why they did things. Why did they have pets? What did they get from paying to feed something that couldn't give you anything back in return? He saw a stray cat and decided to feed it, to find out what it was all about. But it died.

His mother died and he went to stay with his uncle. Kasai tried to interact with Kubota occasionally, but they didn't have anything to say to each other. He bought Kubota some computer games. They were something new and once again he felt that stir of excitement, of being alive. He began looking for things he didn't know about, things that made him think, that made him feel. School got even more boring, they wanted a lot of interaction and he couldn't figure out why. He read books, sometimes they came up with something that made him think.

One day it was raining out and he had nothing to do so he started reading the few books in his uncle's apartment. There was one on Mahjong. It outlined a battle strategy. He started playing. It was better than picking fights. On the streets **some** people fought with strategy but most Mahjong players **used** strategy. It was, well almost fun. Definitely interesting. He enjoyed trying to figure out what the other player wanted, what they need. Maneuvering them into playing the way he wanted them to.

A lot of people seemed to find sex motivating. They paid for it, sometimes they killed for it. He couldn't figure out why do that when you could take care of the need by yourself. Why try and bring in someone you couldn't control? He knew a woman, they had sex once but later in the day he did something and she looked at him with horror, with loathing and in fear. Women weren't worth the trouble. People weren't worth the trouble. He even wound up spending some time in jail because of it. He learned a lot while there.

A yakuzza group wanted him to to be the leader of their youth group. They were quite noisy about it but said he'd be able to play Mahjong with their group. It suited him to say yes. It was interesting, sometimes he had to play out some strategy and sometimes he had to use brute force. It was nothing like school or just aimlessly wandering the streets. Komiya, his second in command in the yakuzza group, tried to take care of everyone. He was also trying to care for his druggie whore of a mother. Kubota was glad he didn't have any parents to weigh him down. Komiya even tried to take care of Kubota, worrying about where he was sleeping, trying to get him to be on time to meetings. He didn't realize how much he had gotten used to having Komiya around and talking to him until he died in his arms. Komiya's last thought was to take care of him. He wanted Kubota to leave the group and live. So he did. But first he took a little revenge.

He found a stray cat. This time he took it home instead of leaving on the streets for some dog to find and kill. The cat really looked like he needed someone to care for him. Maybe if he did that, he could find out how Komiya used to feel.

Please, please leave a review! If its bad, say so.


End file.
